Tom's book is really a very good effort. It's usually, however,
the second theory book I recommend to my guitar students who are interested in theory.
For the first book, I usually point them to, believe it or not,
The Complete Idiot's Guide to Music Theory.
Aside from the fact that the
Idiot's book comes with an ear-training CD that is of reasonable quality, there are some areas I think it provides a slightly better basis than Tom's book for someone just getting into music theory.
Largely these difference rest with choices, and one isn't objectively better or worse than the other. The
Idiot's guide starts, like Tom's book, with the characteristics of sound and frequency, but then goes directly into discussions about pitch, intervals and scales. Tom jumps from sound characteristics to rhythm. To me, this presents a discontinuity.
It's not that Tom's rhythm discussion is bad, it's actually quite good, but simply the organizational choice of putting the discussion where he did strikes me as a bit jumbled.
Where I find Tom's book to be extremely useful is taking the concepts of intervals, scales, and chords and relating them to the fretboard. He is very careful, in the latter part of the book, to present everything in very clear diagrams that make it easy to grasp how what one does on the fretboard relates to the ideas being discussed.
However, the discussions on many topics are pretty limited. Tom's book is less than 100 pages of discursive text, and it is liberally interspersed with diagrams. This means that Tom has very little room to go into depth on any one topic. Again, that's a choice, and it's neither good nor bad. What Tom does cover he covers extremely well, but often quicker than a complete theory newb might need to really understand what is being said.
The
Idiot's guide, for example, has about 12 pages on the basics of chord progressions, plus another 30 or so pages on cadences, turnarounds, and chord substitutions. Tom covers progressions in 2 pages and doesn't really touch on substitutions at all.
I use the
Idiot's guide first because in my experience, Tom's book is so quick hitting that it's hard for someone just starting to look at theory to really get everything he's saying. However, it's great strength, and one that makes it invaluable to guitarists, is that it does relate everything back to the fretboard, whereas most other theory books, if they try to relate to an instrument, choose piano.
In any case, theory is really a complex subject and if you get into it in any depth, you'll find that you will need multiple references. Tom's book is a very good addition to any guitarist theory geek's library.
I would, however, recommend it more as complimentary to another more in-depth first theory book than as a stand alone work.
"The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side." -- HST
